The Top 12 transcendental movies, ever
LITTLE BUDDHA: Keanu Reeves
No. 5
Think of this movie as the French Lieutenant’s Woman of spiritual cinema in that it toggles back and forth between two stories. One narrative is set in modern-day America: the search is on for the next Dalai Lama, and monks vet a Caucasian kid in Seattle who just may be The One. Those scenes are cross-cut with the historical story of Siddhartha, the 5th-century BCE Hindu prince who famously achieved enlightenment sitting under a bodhi tree, and thus, became the founding figure of Buddhism. Directed by Italian master Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor), and lushly-filmed on location in Bhutan and Nepal, this is the part of the movie that works. The other half is so-so. Karma points: The much-mocked acting abilities of Keanu Reeeves shine in this performance; he is flawless — indeed, practically unrecognizable — as Siddhartha.See Little Buddha
NEXT: Brother Sun, Sister Moon
I can’t believe that you guys ranked Last Year at Marienbad so high, or have even heard of it. The first time I saw it I was in university, and it changed my life.
You have all these characters trying to make a connection, and not connecting. All the same, I wanted to be there with them in that timeless dream-state where everyone was so relaxed about it. You rock!
Hey,
Check out “The White Masi” WOW what a movie!!!!!
Where is “The Man From Earth”, a story about a professor who reveals to his colleagues that he is actually 14,000 years old. My favorite line: “Piety is not what the lessons bring to people, it’s the mistakes people bring to lessons.”
1. Razor’s Edge (Tyrone Powers version)
2. The Fountain
3. Somewhere in Time
4. The Matrix
5. What dreams may Come
6. Siddharta
7. Meetings with Remarkable Men
8. Phenomenon
9. Contact
10. Cocoon
11. Under the Tuscan Sun
12. The Passion of the Christ
Others
Celestine Prophecy
The Preacher
The Preacher’s Wife
and many more….
“You admire the man who pushes his way to the top in any walk of life, while we admire the man who abandons his ego”
~~~
Have you ever seen the movie “Groundhog day”? I did. Sometimes I feel as if I am in that movie. I feel as if all my life spins around events that carry the same essence. The situations that I find myself in have been repeatedly recovering through out my life and would be most well defined as fear and frustration. I can find similarities in the type of the causations that lead to that outcome and I know the signs of it coming. It has its own climax, called depression. Thinking about the reasons and understanding them, however, does not help me much in preventing the consequences. I feel as if I am trapped in it and I will never find the way out of it. I feel as if this “It” – something inside me and will always control me. This is the It that let’s me go when I feel to close to end and let me rebuild myself, so that It can take me back again with the new even stronger force. It is not the suicide that can solve the problem but it definitely occasionally comes as a solution of the last reserve in my mind. What is it that stops me? Maybe that this last reserve would not leave me any last chance?
Its been a year now, but if your still in that movie, I recommend you reading Echkart Tolle’s “The Power Of Now” and “New Earth”. You will find all your answers in there. It is the Ego and its endless “Pursuit of happiness” that gives us that feeling. We will never find peace outside of us, its within.
May you find peace.
Great list, just great! I discovered a few new one’s to check out (Fur, Marienbad) and have a few to add.
I agree with The Matrix above, hollywood sure, but impactful? Definitely.
Also Into The Wild, the true story of a man searching for himself.
Rock on!
I haven’t checked the full list, other than the first page…But I’m wondering if the really transcendental/transpersonal movie The Big Blue by Luc Besson is in this..According to the consciousness calibration work of David Hawkins, it registers in the high transcendent/awareness state..Besides, really good acting by Jean Reno, Rosanna Arquette and Jean-Marc Barr.
I prefer considering films that inspire a transcendent response, than poorly made films that take on a transcendent theme/subject. So, to feel the transcendent power of film try: Blue (Kieslowski), Before Night Falls, Mulholland Drive, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Shame (Bergman), Andrei Rublev, The Thin Red Line, Come and See, A Clockwork Orange, 400 Blows, Band of Outsiders, etc…